Honda is best known as a car maker, but it also has a charitable foundation that is doing some interesting things to drive the American economy in the right direction, as we’ve been reporting lately.

A case in point: Honda recently announced a new, $1 million investment in Ohio-based workforce development for an innovative program called EPIC, which will focus on creating more interest in manufacturing careers and bolstering education and training for the high-tech manufacturing jobs of the future.

Before saying more about this grant, let’s just pause to note the irony: A Japanese car company that famously helped bury Detroit, once the core of American industrial know-how, wants to revive the kind of skilled U.S. workforce that ended up with pink slips in an earlier era as foreign cars filled the roads.